Jihadi Beheading Videos and their Non-Jihadi Echoes (original) (raw)
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Off With Their Heads: The Islamic State and Civilian Beheadings
Journal of Terrorism Research, 2015
This article evaluates the use of beheadings by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. We place beheadings in a broader historical context and draw from academic research in terrorism studies and the social sciences to explain why the Islamic State has adopted such brutal tactics. We outline the strategic logic of beheading and evaluate explanations related to symbolic politics, culture, and organizational dynamics. We conclude with a discussion about the future of Islamic State violence.
Beyond Conventional Approaches to Political Violence: ISIS Beheadings as Performances
This dissertation proposes an approach to political violence as performance, specifically in relation to beheadings carried out by militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Previous research on beheadings and executions carried out by armed groups has focused exclusively on sensationalist, strategic and culturalist approaches to political violence, thereby neglecting useful interdisciplinary perspectives. Additionally, the growing volume of scholarship within the field of performance studies dedicated to analysing the significance of violence as a performance has not given sufficient attention to executions and beheadings. The model adopted by this study addresses these two gaps in the literature. By advancing an understanding of ISIS beheadings as performances, this study’s main claim is that such an approach would allow for a more nuanced analysis than simple conventional perspectives. The argument is substantiated by an in-depth analysis of five ISIS beheading videos and the role they played in the US and UK. The findings of this research reinforce the main claim of this study. Beyond supporting this theoretical model, the findings also prompt a re-thinking of how violence committed by terrorist groups should be assessed and analyzed.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2018
In this article, the authors theorize the communicative logic of ISIS online death videos from the burning and shooting of individual hostages to mass battleground executions. Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's reflections on contemporary violence, they demonstrate how ISIS' digital spectacles of the annihilated body confront Western viewers with horror— or rather with different " regimes of horrorism " (grotesque, abject and sublime horror). These spectacles of horror, the authors argue, mix Western with Islamic aesthetic practices and secular with religious moral claims so as to challenge dominant hierarchies of grievability (who is worthy of our grief) and norms of subjectivity. In so doing, the authors conclude, ISIS introduces into global spaces of publicity a " spectacular thanatopolitics " —a novel form of thanatopolitics that brings the spectacle of the savaged body, banished from display since the 19th century, back to the public stage, thereby turning the pursuit of death into the new norm of heroic subjectivity.
Title: ISIL's Execution Videos: Agenda-Setting and Terrorism in the Digital Age
This article offers a bottom-up understanding of the global media's role in global political communication from the perspective of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This empirical analysis provides content and visual analysis of sixty-two videos of executions produced by ISIL in the year following its establishment as an 'Islamic State'. Through examination of the videos as major media production efforts by ISIL, this research identifies how an emergent terrorist group views itself and communicates its message, setting a political agenda and strategic outlook that rely upon the global media to be transmitted and accessed. Data analysis suggests a threefold strategy directed towards: 1.) Legitimization of the need for and, ipso facto, the establishment of a 'state' entity; 2.) Intimidation of religious and political in-group and out-groups and; 3.) Propagation of its message to increase recruitment, funding, and further its legitimization and intimidation efforts. Moreover, this analysis contextualizes the unique duality of ISIL's media strategy: first, its purpose is to spread a political message aimed at both local and global, in-group and out-group consumption through audience segmentation. ISIL's claim to state legitimacy is done through the mimicry of capital punishment as a function of state and political power. Second, ISIL's use and production of graphic violence seeks to induce terror in both local and global audiences. Finally, this article discusses ISIL's "media battle;" its overall media strategy, as well as the intertwined political and religious agenda it seeks to set and spread in the digital media age.
The communication of horrorism: a typology of ISIS online death videos
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2018
In this article, the authors theorize the communicative logic of ISIS online death videos from the burning and shooting of individual hostages to mass battleground executions. Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's reflections on contemporary violence, they demonstrate how ISIS' digital spectacles of the annihilated body confront Western viewers with horror-or rather with different "regimes of horrorism" (grotesque, abject and sublime horror). These spectacles of horror, the authors argue, mix Western with Islamic aesthetic practices and secular with religious moral claims so as to challenge dominant hierarchies of grievability (who is worthy of our grief) and norms of subjectivity. In so doing, the authors conclude, ISIS introduces into global spaces of publicity a "spectacular thanatopolitics"-a novel form of thanatopolitics that brings the spectacle of the savaged body, banished from display since the 19th century, back to the public stage, thereby turning the pursuit of death into the new norm of heroic subjectivity.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) continues to generate headlines as it seeks to further entrench a self-proclaimed caliphate across the Levant. This vision is expansionist, and it is prosecuted through military conquest. Throughout its seized territory, ISIS has instituted what it claims to be Islamic rules of governance. The enforcement of Islamic penal law has led to the implementation of controversial punishments ranging from stoning to death of adulteress women to summary executions of apostate soldiers to amputations of guilty thieves to crucifixions for crimes that include sorcery and blasphemy. In a relatively recent publication following the international uproar over the taped beheading of American journalist James Foley, an ISIS-affiliated religious figurehead, Sheik Husayn ibn Mahmud, released an eight-page polemic entitled “The Question of Beheadings”. The latter article constitutes a sustained response to the ensuing avalanche of criticism directed against ISIS, the crux of which asserted that the punishment of beheading—the taking of a sharp knife to the neck—has no religious basis. Seeking to counter this claim, Sheik Mahmud engages the text of the Qu’ran and hadiths (collections of deeds and saying attributed to Prophet Muhammad, 570-632 AD), as well as appealing to exegetical accounts of classical Muslim scholars (e.g., ibn Kathir, al-Suyuti, al-Qurtubi, al-Zamakshari etc.) to buttress his carefully crafted legal argument, ultimately finding sufficient support for the religious legitimacy of beheadings. The argument frames the act of beheading as being not only the long-standing practice of the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and successors throughout history, but also as a divinely mandated command. This essay examines the crafting of a narrative from the legitimizing sources (i.e., the Qur’an and hadith).
"Cubs of the Caliphate": ISIS's Spectacle of Violence
Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 2019
Abstract Throughout history and across different cultures, militant groups have used children as spies, informants, soldiers and for various other propaganda purposes. (Honwana 2011) Not much has changed with the passage of time. The use of children by ISIS is a modern-day continuation of these trends. However, what sets ISIS apart from other terrorist groups (e.g. the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda) is the fact that ISIS has not only been training children at a large scale, but has also used children extensively for its propaganda campaign. This paper analyses ISIS videos featuring children through the analytical framework of the "spectacle of violence" literature and illustrates that depiction of children as actors and performers of ultra-violence in a theatrical scene, is a visual rhetoric of humiliation and a counter-narrative that juxtaposes the inversion of roles of children and adults.
Whereas video releases have been central to the Islamic State’s efforts to represent itself to its audiences, an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of these sources over a longer period of time is still lacking. This paper therefore provides an overview and analysis of the entire corpus of official videos released by the Islamic State between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2018. It particularly focuses on how the Islamic State’s decline in Iraq and Syria during this period is reflected in its video output and how the group has responded to its setbacks. The paper demonstrates a strong correlation between the group’s mounting troubles and its video production: the numbers of videos decreased dramatically and their content reflects the Islamic State’s (re)transformation from a territory-based ‘state’ to an insurgent group relying on guerrilla tactics and terror attacks. Nevertheless, this paper argues, the Islamic State’s multi-faceted response to its setbacks might ensure the groups’ appeal to its target audience in the years to come.
A cultural criminology of "new" jihad: Insights from propaganda magazines
Crime, Media, Culture, 2020
The backgrounds and modus operandi of more recent jihadi terrorists tend to share factors and characteristics more typically associated with non-political violence such as mass-killings and gang violence. Their attacks, moreover, seem to have been precipitated not by the direct instructions of a formal hierarchy but by the encouragement of propaganda produced and disseminated by networked, media-savvy terrorist groups. It is necessary to explain how these "recruitment" efforts work. Cultural criminology, with its understanding of the relationship between mediated meaning and individual experience, can provide such an analysis. The article presents a qualitative document analysis of 32 propaganda magazines produced by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. It demonstrates that they contain significantly more than religious rhetoric and military strategy. Rather, they are part of a process that crystalizes a jihadi subculture that appeals to disaffected and/or marginalized, excitement-seeking youths. The magazines cultivate violence by constructing a militarized style that celebrates outlaw status, where violence is eroticized and aestheticized. They idealize the notion of a jihadi terrorist that is tough and willing to commit brutal violence. The lifestyle portrayed offers the possibility of heroism, excitement, belonging and imminent fame, themes often espoused by conventional, Western consumer culture. The magazines occasionally draw on street jargon, urban music, fashion, films, and video games. The subcultural model of jihadi propaganda we explicate provides a novel way of understanding terrorist recruiting tactics and motivations that are not necessarily in opposition to contemporary conventional criminal and "mainstream" cultures, but in resonance with them.